


A Tisket A Tasket

by Trickstress



Series: We Built This City [5]
Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Basically this Gavin is similar but unlike the typical hacker Gavin, FAHC, Fake AH Crew, Gavin's backstory, Gen, Guess what Gavin's a chimney sweep, Immortal Fake AH Crew, Little Orphan Gavin, gta v - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-11
Updated: 2017-10-11
Packaged: 2019-01-15 22:46:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12330375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trickstress/pseuds/Trickstress
Summary: Poor baby Gavin was left in a basket. The tale of Gavin Free began in 1800 on a doorstep abandoned in the cold and found himself swept into the life on the rooftops of London. It's a tale of rags to riches and power leading to the most notorious crew the world has ever seen.





	A Tisket A Tasket

Gavin tended to be the initially underestimated person of the crew. Even throughout his life, he was a cheerful guy but hardly anyone saw what went on behind the scenes that got him to where he was as one of the most notorious of the Fake AH Crew.

The baby who would one day become the man known as Gavin Free was born somewhere in England in the year of 1800. He never knew his parents, never knew where he originally came from, and didn’t know his own name. This was because the baby who would one day become Gavin Free was abandoned on a doorstep at six months old in late November, when the snow had yet to fall but it was frigid outside.

The baby was left alone for a good amount of time, about two days crying on the abandoned doorstep. The poor thing had finally become so cold, tired, and hungry that he had stopped crying. Honestly, he was so close to dying that it was a miracle that he lived at all. It wasn’t some family that scooped him up either. 

It was around midnight and a lone chimney sweep whistled as walked down the street with broom in hand. It would have been a usual night if he didn’t hear a whimper coming from somewhere near him. It didn’t sound like one of the stray cats who lived down this alley, but he was intrigued and decided to look around to see if he spotted what made the noise. What he found was a nearly blue baby who whimpered quietly, barely moving in the bassinet. 

“Blimey!”

He quickly scooped the babe up into his arms and wrapped his coat around the child, trying to give the poor thing some of his body heat. The sweep didn’t waste any time and rushed back to the abandoned building where the rest of the town sweeps gathered and the others took one look and helped the boy stave off death another day.

It was with the chimney sweeps that the boy grew up, becoming the younger brother to them all. He was the youngest and would trail around with the others across the rooftops, learning the trade and learning to survive on the streets of London when one didn’t have the means to live traditionally. That’s not to say he wasn’t happy where he was. The boy was honestly very happy to be living with the sweeps and learning so much. They were always so cheerful and were an honest folk who would pool together whatever wage they made to help the group. They also treated him as an equal, even when he was still no taller than their knees.

It was due to this that the makeshift family decided that when the boy was old enough, he would be able to pick his own name. There had been other orphans that had been adopted into the group, however they were typically old enough to remember their old life before the sweeps. The boy was the youngest they ever had and certainly proved a challenge for feeding him at first, but he honestly charmed everyone he met. Still, that left the challenge of his name. As he grew up, they called him Lad. He honestly loved it. It felt like a term of endearment and it pretty much was. His first inkling of a name happened because of a joke as well as the boy’s inability to speak some sounds correctly.

It happened to be the word ‘governor’, which the chimney sweeps used for any manner of man who hired them to help clean their chimney or just even on the street. Now, the boy understood this and wanted to do so as well when he was just starting out. However, he would have the problem of pronouncing it wrong. Instead of ‘governor’, he turned it into ‘gav’na’.

This led to the older boys and men teasing him and calling him “Gav”, even years after he learned how to pronounce it correctly. Add onto the fact that the boy could charm the trousers off of anyone and make some money with his small brush and a little bit of help from one of the men who tagged along with him each day, the group would hang around and watch as he convinced people to hire him. Each time, he’d manage to get an invitation inside to work and maybe have a cookie or two and they’d cheer “Gav’s in!”

The boy loved it so much and eventually heard it so much that he came up with the name ‘Gavin’ and it stuck.

It was when he was sixteen that he learned something that would ultimately change his future. When you worked as a sweep, the rest of the world essentially sees you as a shadow. Never truly there and something you could blissfully ignore and not worry about. They heard all manner of things from dirty secrets to gossip from other lands. It was when he was working at a particularly wealthy house that he heard about a marvelous machine that captured the image of something rather quickly. Now, apparently it had been worked on for years and was still being worked on, but Gavin was fascinated by capturing the image of something instantly. He had always loved looking at the paintings that had adorned the walls of so many of the houses he worked in, and having seen someone be painted before and they weren’t even a quarter of the way done by time he left. The fact that there could someday be a way to make that process instant was astounding.

It wasn’t meant to be however, when Gavin died only the next year at age seventeen. It was one of the more common ways that sweeps ended up dying since they typically banded together to survive the elements. He had been crossing across rooftops and stepped over a chimney and he misjudged his footing and slipped in the surprisingly large opening, only to get stuck in the pipe. He had been trapped there for hours, his voice having given out long ago from calling for help, when the smoke started filling the pipe and he couldn’t breathe. He finally passed out, dizzy from lack of oxygen and the heat that was roasting him.

He woke up to the night sky.

At first, he honestly thought he was in heaven. There was no breeze and the temperature was just perfect for once. He just laid there, breathing in the night until a gasp startled his thoughts.  
It was one of boys he had been teaching to be a sweep.

Well, it was at one point. The twelve-year-old was clearly a grown man now, despite the hints of the youth he once was. He was so shocked to see Gavin that he nearly slipped off the roof.

“Evenin’ Dan!” Gavin greeted him.

“Twenty years after you disappear and you show up look’n the same? Why am I not surprised?” Dan let out a bellowing laugh and helped Gavin up onto his feet. “You haven’ even aged a day. You some sort of magician?”

Gavin shrugged.

“Fell down a pipe and last thing I know I’m suffocating. Then I bloody well woke up as if nothin’ had happened. Strange thing to happen, innit?”

“Bet the boys will be bloody happy to see you back. You were the golden boy of the gang.”

And yes, the gang was pleased to say the least. In fact, Gavin was so welcomed back into the family of sweeps that he was visited by every sweep in London due to his magic trick. Not that he wanted to do it again anytime soon. The fact that it was suddenly two decades later was more than jarring for the lad.

As years passed as normal, Gavin found that he didn’t age a day since he fell into that pipe. It wasn’t as much of an issue for a sweep who meandered the rooftops of London by night, but after several years, he found himself wanting to do something more. The rest of his rag tag family happily agreed with the perpetual seventeen-year old’s plan.

Now, Gavin was clever. He always knew the right angle to come across with someone and the right tone and inflection in his voice to get his way. Not to mention, no one thought of a sweep when they were talking about things behind closed doors. Sweeps were as much of a shadow of the night as the ash and soot that coated them and caressed them in the shadows.

It was due to this that Gavin often could sway a conversation in his favor and end up being paid more, or have more clients for both him and his fellow sweeps. It’s how, despite him looking like one of the youngest sweeps in London, was the unofficial leader as the generation that raised him grew too old to continue in their lifestyle. It’s due to this that he ended up with plenty of funds to not only pay for his own schooling in business, but also being able to fund a comfortable place for them to live and work other jobs that weren’t in the skies looking down on the streets of London.

Gavin found himself peddling information between the richer clients. A hint or a suggestion in the right place earned him trust with the right people. Got him in one of the best business schools in the country along with prestigious mentor who understood his methods and refined them to an art form.

He learned the art of the business deal, how to invest properly, the stock market, and so much more. Gavin quickly became an influential member of the upper class, working his way up not only from his skill in business that he was quickly developing but also due to his family as well. Gavin had bought a large house on the outskirts of the city that housed at least half of the sweep population. There was another house not even two blocks down that held most of everyone else. They were all taken care of and even when times were hard or the weather was rough, he stayed with them and kept them safe. As gratitude, they passed along any and all information to Gavin whether it was about upcoming business deals still in the works, illicit goings-on, or just about people themselves.

Gavin quickly not only became a very young looking broker of investments but also of information. If someone in the upper class needed to know something about anyone, they went to Gavin. They never figured out how he knew everything but Gavin merely sat with all manners of people with a lazy smile, disheveled hair, and a nice outfit. Pleasant to everyone he met and never raising his voice.

He lived both lifestyles of a sweep and businessman concurrently and with ease. They were just simply two different hats that he wore with pride and class. The sweeps were honorable and never stole, just used what they had to keep themselves alive and occasionally make people smile. Gavin strove to keep that integrity intact, even if the people who he talked to never knew he was a sweep.  
It was also through this time that Gavin invested money not only into cameras, but eventually motion picture cameras. They still fascinated him as much as when he was sixteen years old. They were his pet project that he worked with in his free time, taking photographs of his friends and family and constantly refining his work.

As Gavin’s information business became more and more successful, he hired some of his sweep family to act as his mouthpieces so that as the years went by, people wouldn’t notice as he remained the same age.

And so it went for a least a number of decades. Gavin collecting information and selling it once more, investing money and whatever he didn’t use to take care of his sweep family or pay bills or the like, he saved away or spent a small portion on camera equipment.

It wasn’t until Hollywood land became a thing over in America that Gavin decided to spread his wings and hop the pond. He left his sweeps in charge of the business at home while he had some fun in America. Honestly, not without visiting the stock market in New York City. After some fun trades in there, he toured the American countryside in his train ride to California. He found that he absolutely loved the casual feel and warm weather of sunny Southern California and found that this would be a great place to set up shop. 

He bought a decently sized house and first got to work in the lower echelons of the area, working to help better the situations of people who lived paycheck to paycheck, offering them the same care and familial bond that he had with the sweeps and surprisingly many of them agreed. They even offered to keep their ears open as they worked and pass on the information they heard to him. Gavin was surprised and flattered at them doing so without him even asking, but knew a good opportunity when he saw one. He quickly grew his empire subtly behind the scenes of Hollywood land while he wined and dined with directors and stars, funding projects and even working as a camera man for some of them. When the Great Depression struck, he made sure that his American family was well funded before making the trip back to London to catch up with his first family.

He jumped back and forth between the two places four times a year, depending on how long his movie projects would take. One of the more notable ones was when Walt Disney was working on a film called Mary Poppins and they needed numerous extras for a scene about chimney sweeps. Well, Gavin could help with that.

He and at least thirty of the sweeps made the hop across the pond to help for that one scene and even some additional ones in the movie. It was his favorite project to work on and even appear on camera for.

The 20th century passed relatively quietly for Gavin, just working on projects and spreading his information brokering across the United States, learning a numerous things about numerous amounts of people and he was a person to go to if you were on the side of good or the side of questionable morals.

It wasn’t until 2013 that Gavin got information from someone in a city called Los Santos that a Mr. Geoff Ramsey was looking to talk to him in person.

And the rest is history.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh Gavin, your backstory was fun. Though, I'm still looking forward to Geoff's the most. Gavin's is a bit more vague on the details but they'll start coming to light more during the modern stories. Just know that this Gavin isn't the hacker that most tend to put him in. He's actually the one with the most...not so legal ties out of the entire group.


End file.
